Spain’s Alarming Abortion Debate

Jan. 17, 2014

Spain’s conservative Popular Party, led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, is pushing a bill that would restrict reproductive rights so severely that many women would be forced to travel abroad to seek abortions or turn to illegal and risky procedures. The bill would allow abortion only in the case of rape or grave danger to the health of the mother as determined by two independent medical professionals. Minors who seek abortions would need parental approval. Fetal abnormalities would no longer qualify as a reason to terminate a pregnancy. If the bill is passed, Spain will become the first member of the European Union to retreat from a decades-long trend toward safe and legal abortion.

Fortunately, the bill is meeting stiff resistance in Spain’s Parliament. Protests have erupted in cities across Spain. The Socialist Workers Party, under whose watch a 2010 bill liberalizing access to abortion was passed, is fiercely opposed. Even some members of the Popular Party have revolted, with the party leader for the Extremadura region, José Antonio Monago, pressing for changes.

The debate is moving beyond Spain. Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the main architect of the bill and Spain’s minister of justice, has vowed to take his anti-abortion crusade to the European Parliament and shatter “the myth of the moral superiority of the left.” Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former head of France’s far-right National Front party, has hailed the Spanish bill. Both parties are fighting to gain seats in May elections for the European Parliament, guaranteeing that the issue will play a central role.

Already, leftist parties in the European Parliament have joined forces to reject the restrictions in the Spanish law. Mikael Gustafsson, chairman of the Parliament’s committee on women’s rights and gender equality, condemned the retrograde bill. Parliament can do even more to protect women in Spain, and all of Europe, by trying again to pass a report, narrowly defeated in December, that would designate a woman’s right to abortion a fundamental human right.